The irony that Hunter has the word "college" in its name
shouldn't escape you. Hunter's level of exclusivity tops even
that of Harvard University — but Hunter evaluates 4-year-olds
instead of high school seniors.

Hunter College Elementary is a K-6 school that is publicly funded
and serves intellectually gifted students. It is administered
by Hunter College, a college of the City University of New
York.

The only entry point for Hunter is kindergarten. This means that
if you get rejected the first time, you can't apply to the
elementary school again. At Harvard there is always the option to
transfer.

Each year, Hunter chooses 25 girls and 25
boys from all of Manhattan to be admitted to its incoming
kindergarten class, according to its website. They're
hand-selected from a pool of about
2,500 applicants, according to the website Inside
Schools. To put that into perspective, that makes the
acceptance rate for Hunter 2%. Harvard's undergraduate acceptance
rate for 2015 was 6.2%.

Prospective Hunter students must first take a
Stanford–Binet IQ test administered in a formal setting. The
school informs parents that they should not prep their children
for testing and that they'll be disqualified if there's evidence
they prepared a child for the exam.

The pool of students is then
whittled down to 250 of the children with the highest
scores.

The remaining applicants are
brought in for an evaluation round where they are observed
individually interacting with peers and one-on-one with teachers.
The Admissions Selections Committee chooses kids without knowing
their names or other identifying factors.

For comparison's sake, here is the side-by-side application
requirements of Hunter Elementary and Harvard University.

Abby Jackson

Hunter is unbelievably
difficult to get into for a reason. It has a reputation for
providing an amazing learning experience to gifted students — all
free of tuition charges. And Hunter College High School has an
impressive
list of notable alumni including Supreme Court Justice Elena
Kagan.